Camden Fringe 2024
I Am Not Black
Type of Guy Theatre
Genre: Fringe Theatre, New Writing, Theatre
Venue: The Libra
Festival: Camden Fringe
Low Down
What is identity? How much of what we perceive as identity is ultimately a prejudice, our own as much as other people’s? These were questions that I pondered when I left the new-ish Libra Theatre Café on Chalk Farm Road.
Review
We meet Temz Thomas who is desperately trying to locate his BlackBerry from year 9 in his old bedroom at his parent’s house. It is not just nostalgia that sends him on this quest. He has been invited to give a talk at his old school. He doesn’t really know why he has been invited. He is a low key poet, that’s all. Yes, he has odd pieces published. He even managed to get featured on Poems on the Underground, just when COVID hit and apart from key workers no one had a chance to read it.
Poetry became Temz’s outlet for his anger and aggression. The first poem was written in his secondary school loo. He hated his school days. He hated how they, the teachers and the students, perceived him. It causes him still so much angst he spends a fortune on therapy to moan about his time at Colonial High and thinks his therapist isn’t paid enough. So why does he want to go back and why is he looking for his BlackBerry?
How did Temz even end up at Colonial High, a private school? His parents are West African academics. Mum is a ‘proper’ doctor, dad has a PhD in engineering. Education is important in his family. A state run comprehensive is out of the question for his parents and sadly for a local grammar school he is not academic enough. He has no special skills. He is not good at sports or maths or even arts. He is average. Only the average pupil at his school is white and middle class. The school run is a catwalk for high-end cars: Mercedes, BMW and even Porsche. Here his mum’s green Volvo stands out for all the wrong reasons.
Temz tries to make friends, but in his year many have known each other since primary school or even before. Like AJ. That’s not a nickname for one person as one could assume, but for a duo; Abbey and Jay. Jay is a Millwall supporting white boy and Abbey is mixed raced. His parents have divorced and he is now raised by his white mum. Then there is Ummy who is a snobbish black boy and Dennis who tries to comply with every black stereotype there is and has managed to be a popular kid since junior school.
Temz suffers casual racism disguised as banter. It is never banter, it is racism. Banter is just the term the English like to give to abuse they don’t want to be called out on. So when Temz complains to his form teacher, his grievances are dismissed. This sends Temz on a journey where he questions his own lived experience. Does he get it all wrong?
Seeing he is struggling to connect at school his mum signs him up to a church group. There he is the posh boy who is told he never had it hard. Isn’t it surprising how often others, who never even bothered to get to know you, label you with an unwavering certainty? The audience reacts in shock when Temz quotes his church mates saying he hadn’t faced the black struggle. It comes from a space where teenagers seek to stand out, when they want their existence acknowledged as an individual not a member of a family or clan. So one tries to find something to connect to and make it their own. Often a toxic mélange of arrogance and ignorance creates a condescending mindset that smears bovine excrement over an older generations life threatening struggle. It is insulting for a Brit born in the late 90s to assume they can even fathom what is was like to be black in 1960 America. Youth generally suffers collectively from the Dunning Kruger effect and the ensuing self-righteousness is deeply offensive.
Temz is a lost soul. He doesn’t know how to behave in this poisonous soup of prejudice against his person. His suffering is only expressed in his poems. Then Ayo joins his school. He is popular. He is good at sports, he fits the black stereotype better and he couldn’t care less if people say stupid often racist things. He even calls it out. He stands up for himself without comparing himself to an older generation. He lives in the here and now until he makes a grave mistake. A racist expression he has picked up during a popular videogame, gets him expelled from school. The irony is not lost on the group of black boys that had rallied around him.
This incident makes Temz reflect on his own behaviour. And he has to admit that all the more or minder open racism and prejudice he suffered from, were also things he said about others, especially Ummy. And he learns a universal truth. He is not free of sin. He is as prejudiced against others as they are against him. The simple fact that he is young and therefore hasn’t much knowledge of the world has made him pigeonhole the people around him. By examining his own behaviour he grows in a more rounded being.
In a long powerful rant, listing all his shortcomings he really does grip the audience. There are the more mature theatre goers who have come to a similar conclusion or even had a similar experience. To grow wise is to understand that we are work in progress and we always are at risk to overstep the mark. We need to mirror our behaviour towards others and questions ourselves how we would feel if this or that was said about or to us.
The younger audience members started to feel visibly uncomfortable. There was a group of teenagers at the front of the seating area. They made up about half the spectators. It was interesting to see their reaction to this play. At the beginning they cheered and interjected when Temz mentioned his experience with racism. They clearly felt he was representing their lived experiences. However, the more and more self-reflective the play became, the more this group quietened. By the time of Temz’s passionate self-criticism, the teenagers averted their gazes. Sitting at the back I could see how affected they were in the pale glimmer of the stage light on their faces. Some turned their head away from the stage, others looked motionless into space, turning their seat at an angle so they don’t have to look at Temz. One started to occupy themselves with the artificial flowers in a small vase on the table in front of them. This hit home. This was not what they had expected. Now they realised they were not only victims of racism, they were perpetrators.
Us older lot who had witnessed this behaviour for decades felt relieved. At last someone with the right to speak out, did speak out. Before we ask others to change, we should look at ourselves and ask ourselves ‘what do I have to do?’. How can I be the change that I want to see in society. If we all work on ourselves before we ask others to change, we all gain more insights and maybe even more happiness. As every psychiatrist will confirm we only have the power to change ourselves. We cannot change others.
The writer Akin Wright, who also played the role of Temz with passion and sincere intensity, has created a powerful work that is desperately needed in these increasingly polarising populist times. This was the third run of the play since it’s premiere in January last year. It is deserving of a bigger audience at a bigger venue. This is the sort of play I would like to see performed at The Bridge, The Royal Court or even The Dorfman at the National Theatre complex. It should be seen in Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester. It is too important to be played to a couple of dozens at a Fringe venue on a rainy Tuesday afternoon.
I chose to see this play for very personal reason. I was raised by a mixed ethnic couple. The racism my mother faced for dating my dad, was the same racism my dad faced for dating my mum. Which one of them was told off for holding hands with someone who had a different skin colour depended on the skin colour of the passer by. If they looked like my dad, they said to him he should go with one of his own kind, if they looked like my mum, they informed her that she should fall in love with someone who has a similar skin tone to her. The one thing that became apparent was that racism is a universal human experience. Everyone can be racist, even victims of racism, and everyone needs to check themselves.
This play must be seen. Look out for it and if if pops up anywhere near you. Make sure you catch it.
